English is the new Esperanto
Aug 18th, 2008
I was teaching in Europe last week, and I was reminded of something: There are 400 million native English speakers, but over a billion people who speak English as a second language. English is the language of business and technology around the globe. At any given instant on this planet, most people who are speaking English are not native speakers.
(As a native English speaker, I’m rather pleased by this arrangement — I can go anywhere in the world and ask, “What am I eating?” and someone in the restaurant will be able to answer. I haven’t always been pleased by the response, but I have always received one.)
Several languages, including Swahili and Esperanto, have evolved specifically to be second languages. Unlike English, these languages are easy-to-learn and small mistakes result in small misunderstandings (”Inflammable”?!?).
English is still evolving down its wandering path. In this post, I’d like to suggest that we make a conscious effort to make the language easier to learn and use correctly.
Because of new technologies, new companies, and new slang, words are added to our language all the time. Perhaps we should choose to spell them phonetically. Perhaps we should make sure that new nouns are pluralized with the addition of an “s”. Perhaps all new verbs should be regular.
Perhaps we should take a good look at common forms of incorrect grammar and see if they actually make our language easier to learn. Maybe we should give a loose leash to those who are trying to make English more accessible.
I am going to try to use simple language and limited slang in my writing. When one considers the population of the world, it seems rather rude to address only the native English speakers.
“Perhaps we should make sure that new nouns are pluralized with the addition of an “s”. Perhaps all new verbs should be regular.”
Well, aren’t they?
Humbly, Ylan
Well, good for you that your English-speaking conscience does not trouble you because:
- you enjoy a linguistically privileged position in this world, while (by your own estimate) a billion other people are condemned to spend years of their lives in school studying English, whether they want to or not, and rarely being able to reach your level, while you yourself have absolutely no need to spend time learning any other language.
- your language has destroyed, and is destroying, many minor languages and cultures (two examples: Celtic languages in the British Isles, N. American indigenous languages) whether through outright cultural colonization, or through slightly more subtle economic pressures.
- world info flow is becoming increasing unidirectional, where most news items now originate in English-speaking countries and are controlled largely by English-language news agencies.
- the present position of World English is an enormous cash-cow for all Engish-speaking countries, and creates economic clients (victims?) in other countries.
Fair? Democratic? Equal language rights (as per UN Declaration of Human Rights)? I don’t think so! The most rational solution is a planned non-ethnic language, not making “I seen ya”, “he don’t know”, “between he and I”, “I’m laying on the grass”, “off of” generally acceptable.
I think all programmers have some desire to make things more efficient and elegant. English as a language is not very elegant, but its popularity and ubiquity is. One beautiful scheme for simplifying our spelling at least is called Nuspelynh, for “Newspelling” (http://crockford.com/wrrrld/nuspelynh.html), invented by renaissance man Douglas Crockford.
You might be interested in one of the things Teddy Roosevelt had in common with Chairman Mao. They both tried to standardize their home languages. Mao succeeded, more or less.
While it’s sure it’s nice that English is spoken almost everywhere since that makes it possible for me to get around easier (English is the only language beside my native language I kind of speak), it also has a huge disadvantage.
All native English speakers will have a huge advantage in a discussion/negotiation, all others will be at an disadvantage. So people are not meeting on equal terms … which is sad.